March's Luck (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 5)

by A. E. Howe

  “Who stole the backhoe and dug those holes down by the railroad tracks?”

  “I don’t know. Really,” he said.

  “Who’s Joel Patrick?” I asked and Eddie’s reaction was immediate. He turned bright red and began grinding his teeth.

  “You need to arrest him.”

  “Glad to, just tell me what he’s done.”

  “He’s been trying to horn in on the gold,” Eddie said, but I thought there might be another reason he was so anti-Joel.

  “Let me guess. He likes Marcy too.”

  Eddie looked away, grinding his teeth the whole time, but wouldn’t answer.

  “Tell me more about Joel. I’ll be glad to lock him up for you if you can give me just cause,” I said reasonably.

  “He’s a crook. Drinks too much. Always flirting with Marcy. He thinks he knows where the gold is. Told Marcy she didn’t need the book ’cause he had information that no one else did. But he wouldn’t tell us.”

  I’d never seen Eddie so mad. He had it bad for Marcy.

  “But I think he was lying,” Eddie said and I suspected that he was right. Joel seemed as caught up in the gold fever as Marcy and Eddie. And maybe Hank? He’d been interested in the legend years ago. Was he involved with this gang that couldn’t shoot straight? Maybe he was the one that was egging them on.

  “Did Joel steal the truck and the backhoe?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Does he know Hank?”

  “I guess so. Whenever Joel was around Marcy, they made me leave. But…”

  “But you didn’t always go far.”

  “A couple of times I kinda hung around outside,” Eddie admitted. And that’s what made Eddie a useful CI—at heart he was a sneak. Maybe it was all those years as a kid, creeping around wearing women’s clothes.

  “And?”

  “Hank came by Marcy’s house when Joel was there, so they had to know each other. Right?”

  “Your logic is unimpeachable. When was this?”

  “I don’t know. A week ago? Something like that.”

  A CI with a better memory would be nice, I thought. “Where’s Marcy now?”

  Eddie pulled out his phone and opened an app. “She’s at her folk’s house,” he said confidently.

  “Let me see that,” I said, reaching out for his phone. Sure enough, there was a red blinking dot on a map of Calhoun.

  “I installed an app on her phone a week ago. It lets me see where she is.”

  “Marcy let you do this?”

  “She doesn’t know about it. Marcy’s not very smart when it comes to phones and computers and stuff,” he said. I looked at him with a new appreciation. He had all the makings of a professional stalker.

  “I’m a little confused about the timeline and how everything fits together. From the moment that you and Marcy met, go through all the different events that got her little gold-hunting party going and then bring it up to date.”

  “Right. Okay. I met Marcy in the bar she was working at on South Beach. She was bartending there. Damn, she was hot behind the bar, mixing drinks, all the guys flirting with her. She has this one drink that she—”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “Less about Marcy’s charms and more about the gold fever.”

  “Anyway, we got to talking and, you know, being from the same place, that kind of bonded us. We hung out a few times and then, when her dad got sick, she wanted someone to ride up with her. I needed to get out of South Beach anyway. I was doing way too much…,” he stopped himself and looked up at the camera, “…drinking, way too much drinking. So I came up here with her. Then, I don’t know, we’d been up here about a week. I was crashing at her parents’ house. I don’t think her mom was too happy about that, but with Marcy’s dad being sick, her mom was spending most of her time at the hospital or nursing home, whatever.”

  “The gold,” I prompted

  “The gold, right. Marcy said that her family and mine had a secret. There was gold that had been stolen a long time ago. I remembered hearing about it. She said that she had some information and knew a guy who might help us. Well, that turned out to be Joel. But I think someone else was involved too. Maybe it was Hank. She wouldn’t tell me much. It was like she didn’t trust me to keep my mouth shut.” Recognizing irony was not in Eddie’s wheelhouse.

  “Go on.”

  “Not much else to tell. She talked about the book that you had. Of course, she didn’t know I knew you. You know, she doesn’t like you very much.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  “We went down by the railroad tracks a couple of times and looked around. I’ve got a friend that works in a pawn shop in Tallahassee and he lent me a metal detector. But we didn’t have much luck with that. There’s, like, all kinds of metal and junk around those tracks. And when you get away from the tracks, all you find is old rusted tractor parts and crap.”

  “Marcy wasn’t worried you all’d get caught?”

  “Funny. Now that you mention it, I remember her saying that we had the Parrishes’ permission, but we had to be careful not to get caught, which didn’t make a lot of sense.”

  It made sense if you had one of the Parrishes’ permission, but if not all of the family knew what you are doing. More and more, it was looking like Hank Junior was knee-deep in the hunt for gold.

  Eddie chatted on a bit more, but I could tell that I’d mined all the useful information I was going to get out of him.

  “Let’s go.” I stood up.

  “Where?”

  “Wherever you want for now. I’m going to go pick up Marcy. Check your app. Is she still at home?”

  He pulled up the app. “Yeah.”

  “Good. You should probably avoid Marcy’s folks’ house for a couple of hours.”

  “You aren’t going to arrest her?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said and held the door open for him. He hurried out, trying to keep an eye on me, all concerned that I might lock up his girlfriend.

  “Does she even know you have a thing for her?” I asked him as we walked to the front of the building.

  “Yeah, maybe, I don’t know.”

  “So you haven’t told her, and you all haven’t done anything.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Sad. Eddie, you’ve got to go for it. She’s crazy as hell. Tell her you have the hots for her and if she turns you down, you win. If she says cool, you win. Either way, you win.”

  I followed him out the front door. On the way to my car, I pulled out my cell phone and called Darlene. “I know it’s late, but I’m going to go round up Marcy.”

  “On my way,” was her answer. I told her where I’d be and suggested that she park nearby and walk over to my car. We’d go in together.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Pikes had a nice house in an older area outside of town. Most of the houses sat on five to ten acres, so it wasn’t hard to find a spot to park where I wouldn’t be noticed from the house, but where Darlene could easily find me.

  She arrived just a few minutes after I did. Is she always ready to walk out the door? I wondered.

  “I don’t live that far away,” she said as though she’d read my mind. She got into my car. “It’s the low brick house?”

  “Yep. Her mother may be there, and Marcy might put up a hissy fit. You never know with her,” I said as I started the car and drove the last hundred feet before pulling into their driveway behind the red car I’d seen Marcy driving. The house was surrounded by large slash pines and azaleas. The moon was full and bright enough to give the yard a silvery glow.

  “Do you want to go around back or do you want me to?” I asked. On TV they love for both cops to go in the front door so there can be a big “chase the suspect” scene, but I really tried to avoid running after anyone. If you had to run, then you’d already made a mistake.

  “I’ll go around back,” Darlene answered and headed around the side of the house.

  I knocked on the door and immediately he
ard movement inside. The door opened and Mrs. Pike stood in the doorway. I hadn’t seen her in years and it was obvious that the stress of taking care of someone who was terminally ill had taken its toll.

  “Hi, Mrs. Pike. You probably don’t remember me. I’m Larry Macklin. Your daughter and I dated years ago.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I’m terrible with faces. Of course. Can I help you?”

  “I’m an investigator with the sheriff’s office now and I need to talk to…,” I heard an expletive from the back of the house, “…Marcy.”

  “Oh, ummm, yes, come in.” The poor woman had also heard the commotion and looked very confused. As I entered the house I heard a sound off to my left. I turned to see Marcy stalking toward me with Darlene right behind her.

  “What the hell do you want?” she greeted me.

  “She went out the sliding door,” Darlene explained. “I just suggested that she didn’t really want to play games.” Marcy turned and glared at her. I suspected that Darlene had said some other things too, which she was too polite to repeat in front of Mrs. Pike.

  “Marcy, would you rather talk here or down at the office?” I asked, trying to stay calm and non-confrontational.

  “Whatever,” Marcy grumbled. “I don’t have anything to say anyway.”

  We all followed Mrs. Pike into the dining room. “Can I get you all something to drink? Coffee?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to give them anything, for God’s sake. They’re the damn police,” Marcy barked at her poor mother.

  “We’re fine,” I told Mrs. Pike, who left the room, her eyes downcast.

  “So what the hell do you want?” Marcy asked again, her eye blazing.

  “Why do you have to be like this? You don’t even know why we’re here. We just want to talk to you. Ask a few questions.”

  “Then get it over with already,” she said.

  What did I ever see in her? I asked myself. Back then, was she really that pretty? I shook off this assessment of my shallow dating choices and asked, “When was the last time you saw Hank Parrish Junior?”

  Marcy gave me a calculating look. “I don’t remember. Years ago,” was the lie she came up with.

  “Try again.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Compounding the lie. Try again.”

  “What’s the point of asking me questions if you aren’t going to believe my answers?” she threw back.

  “What’s the point of lying if the person you’re lying to knows you’re lying?” I lobbed back into her court.

  Marcy clenched her mouth shut like a kid refusing to eat.

  “Fine. I’ll make it easier for you. We know that you’ve been seeing him off and on since you got back in town. Furthermore, I suspect that he roped you into this crazy gold-hunting scheme. Or did you rope him into it?”

  “I didn’t rope him into anything.”

  “But you now admit that you have seen him recently.”

  “No.”

  “That wasn’t a question. You know, I actually admire your technique. You’re managing to get information out of me without divulging anything. Here, I’ll give you something else. He’s gone missing.”

  Marcy’s eyes narrowed as she tried to decide whether I was trying to trick her. She seemed to have become even more paranoid over the last couple of days.

  “Two people are dead and now Hank is missing. You might want to start helping us. You are in real danger of becoming either a victim or a suspect.”

  I could tell that Marcy really, really wanted to spit in my face. But she controlled herself and finally answered, “I saw him a couple of days ago.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “Here.”

  “He came here?”

  “No, I kidnapped him. What the hell do you think?” She had a point.

  “Why did he come here?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Which means it was about the gold. What was his involvement in your treasure hunt?”

  I could see her mind working, turning over all the different answers she could give. Marcy approached lying like a chess player, calculating all the different ramifications of each lie that she could tell, and trying to decide which one would give her the best advantage.

  “He owned the land.” Not strictly true, but I could see why she might have needed him because of his relationship to the property. “I didn’t make him do anything. He’s been hunting the gold a lot longer than me.”

  I had to pay close attention now. When Marcy appeared to be telling the truth was when you had to be the most cautious.

  “The last time you saw him, what was his mood?”

  “He was real upset about his brother’s murder. He kept saying that he didn’t know who would do that to Joe. When I tried to talk to him about the gold, he didn’t seem that interested.” Marcy seemed puzzled by that. “Finally he said that he thought we were on the right track for finding out where it was buried.”

  “Who told you about the book and the code?”

  She hesitated. “Hank. He called me right after I came back to town. Said he had information about the Nazi gold. I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. He kept calling, saying that I needed to get a book that had been sent to my grandfather while he was in jail. If I got the book, then he had the code and we could put them together and find the gold.”

  “Did he say where he got the code?”

  “He said it was in a letter he found that my grandfather had written to one of his friends.”

  “Where is the code now?” As soon as I said that, Marcy started to heat up.

  “I don’t know! I haven’t seen Hank since I got the book. If you had given me the damn book the first time I asked for my stuff, we’d have already found the gold. But now I have the book and I can’t find Hank.” She was getting madder and madder as she went on.

  “How do I know you don’t have the code?” Marcy demanded, going into paranoia overload. “You’re after the gold! That’s why you keep asking me all these questions. Damn you! You aren’t getting it. None of it!”

  She was shrieking so loudly that her mother came back and looked into the room. As soon as Mrs. Pike saw that Darlene and I weren’t killing her daughter, she sighed and left. I can only imagine that she had been watching her daughter throw tantrums for her entire life. I was impressed that she even bothered to check.

  “We couldn’t care less about the gold. We’re trying to catch whoever murdered Hank Senior and Joe. More importantly, right now we’re trying to find Hank Junior. That’s all we want to do,” I tried to explain.

  “And what about you?” Marcy stopped and turned on Darlene. Darlene’s body stiffened, ready to explode into action.

  “Back off,” Darlene said, unwilling to engage Marcy in conversation.

  “What’s wrong? I hit a nerve?”

  “You will back off.” No threat. Not even an order. Just a statement in a loud clear voice. With Marcy still in her personal space, Darlene rose from her chair. Darlene had an inch or two on Marcy and eyes that never wavered. Marcy held Darlene’s gaze for another couple of seconds, just to save face, but there was no doubt she’d lost the stare-down contest.

  “I don’t care about any gold,” Darlene said, still standing and carefully watching Marcy. “You need to tell us everything you know about Hank Junior, and what might have happened to him.”

  Marcy seemed smaller under Darlene’s gaze. “I told you what I know. He was here. We talked about… his brother dying, and the gold, and then he left.”

  “You have no idea what might have happened to him?”

  Marcy didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Maybe she realized that finding Hank was as important to her as it was to us. Without Hank, she had no chance of finding the gold.

  “He seemed… Look, I’ve been pretty strung out before, and I’ve seen addicts that have been clean for a while, but fall off the wagon. That’s how he was. Like a guy who’s slipping
. Letting go of his recovery.” This was the most sincere I’d ever seen Marcy.

  “What about Joel. Has he seen Hank?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcy said. She’d gone from screaming maniac to sullen child in a matter of minutes. I wondered if a doctor had ever slapped a bi-polar label on her.

  “Where is Joel?”

  “I guess at the motel.”

  “Okay, we’re leaving. If you think of anything else call… Deputy Marks.” Both Marcy and Darlene gave me dirty looks, but Darlene took out one of her cards and held it out to Marcy who, reluctantly, accepted it.

  Outside, I turned to Darlene. “Let’s swing by the motel.”

  Darlene followed me to the motel, where we found Joel. Predictably, he didn’t know anything about Hank’s disappearance. I reminded him again about not leaving town, then headed home for some much needed sleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dawn came early. I was up and out to the Parrishes’ property before the sun was fully over the horizon. Damn if Darlene wasn’t already there waiting for me.

  We spread out a geological survey map on the hood of my car. “If he’s still around here, he might have wandered off onto Florida Pines land,” Darlene said.

  About a hundred yards on the other side of the railroad tracks was the beginning of a huge track of land owned by the Florida Pines timber company. The property was designated as a wildlife management area and covered almost ten thousand acres. Divided into parcels that were timbered for pulp wood on rotation, the area was crisscrossed by dozens of dirt logging roads. Some parts were covered in twenty-year slash pines while others had been clear-cut this past summer.

  “Of course, he might have been picked up by someone and not be anywhere around here,” I said.

  “We don’t have much choice. We have to make the effort to search the area until we have information that points in some other direction.”

  I called the watch commander and he promised to send me two deputies as soon as the morning rush was over, then I checked in with Marge. She hadn’t heard anything new. She was busy organizing a group of farm employees, friends and family, including Clive and Jane, to help with the search and she said they’d be there soon. All pretense of keeping this within the family had gone out the window.